Patterico's Pontifications

6/7/2006

Memo to Steve Lopez: Here’s Why the Gropegate Story Upset Us

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 8:52 pm



Armed Liberal slams L.A. Times columnist Steve Lopez for his column today.

Lopez gives his paper a pat on the back for its coverage of Phil Angelides and Steve Westly, and says:

I’m just wondering why the paper hasn’t gotten huzzahs from the professional gas bags who worked themselves into a frenzy three years ago over our equally tough reporting on a candidate named Arnold Schwarzenegger. As that doddering shill Hugh Hewitt put it back then, The Times was “an organ of the Democratic Party” with no interest other than “agenda journalism.”

I’ve explained the problems with the Gropegate story before, here and here.

In essence, my main problem was the timing: it was published less than a week before the election. Obviously, the paper wasn’t going to run the story after the election. Does anybody here, even one commenter, actually believe that the paper would have worked on this story for several weeks, and printed it three days after the election, because it “wasn’t ready” before then? If even one person believes that, please raise your hand.

I see no hands.

Editors set a deadline for the story: get it printed before the election. Well, if they could set that deadline, they could have set one a couple of weeks earlier, and run a less detailed story. They could have focused on covering fewer women, for example. That way, it wouldn’t have felt like a last-minute smear job that Arnold barely had time to respond to.

If your professor says get the term paper in by the last day of class, you do. If he says get it in two weeks before, you can do that, too. Maybe it won’t be quite as detailed. But you can do it — if you think it’s important.

It was important for the paper not to print that story with less than a week to go before the election. Stories like that are routinely seen as hatchet jobs — and for good reason. The candidate barely has time to respond. The issue dominates over all other issues.

Voters are tired of these late-hit stories.

The editors failed to understand this, and the paper’s reputation suffered dearly as a result.

Get it now, Steve?

18 Responses to “Memo to Steve Lopez: Here’s Why the Gropegate Story Upset Us”

  1. you’re carrying water for a governor who once informed brazilian media that his favorite body part was “the ass”.
    you’re carrying water for a governor who has publicly admitted to group sex with a woman who entered a gym full of bodybuilders on steroids.
    and you’re complaining about the timing of publication. from where i sit, i thought the timing was optimum.

    assistant devil's advocate (67da01)

  2. “In essence, my main problem was the timing: it was published less than a week before the election. Obviously, the paper wasn’t going to run the story after the election.” – Patterico

    Love the selective amnesia.

    Immediately before Kerry locked up the nomination, major media carried rumors that a woman he’d slept “fled the country at his urging.”

    Started with Drudge fulminating about “a serious investigation of the woman and the nature of her relationship with Sen. John Kerry at TIME magazine, ABC NEWS, the WASHINGTON POST, THE HILL and the ASSOCIATED PRESS, where the woman in question once worked.” (http://www.drudgereport.com/mattjk1.htm)

    It was then front page two days running in the NY Daily News.

    George Stephanopoulos did a Sunday segment with guests.

    I acknowledge that more “responsible” papers carried the denial before the allegation – unlike the LAT example.

    Fox News staked out the PA home of the woman’s parents for live reports.

    “‘I have never had a relationship with Sen. Kerry, and the rumors in the press are completely false,’ Alexandra Polier, 27, said in a statement to the Associated Press from Nairobi, Kenya, where she was visiting the parents of her fiance.” – AP, via Knight-Ridder.

    The denouement:

    Kerry Burke, who coauthored the Daily News story, said that he had learned about the alleged affair from one of the Polier’s Columbia classmates. Daily News began working on the story prior to Matt Drudge’s release Burke said. “The Daily News doesn’t consider Matt Drudge and the London Sun legitimate sources. We decided not to go with it until we got her version of events.”

    http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/affalert143.shtml

    steve (f8c5a5)

  3. you’re carrying water for a governor who once informed brazilian media that his favorite body part was “the ass”.
    you’re carrying water for a governor who has publicly admitted to group sex with a woman who entered a gym full of bodybuilders on steroids.
    and you’re complaining about the timing of publication. from where i sit, i thought the timing was optimum.

    This often happens when I get new readers. People don’t know me and don’t know my background, and make bad assumptions. Like you just did.

    I am not carrying water for Arnold. I opposed him in the recall and supported McClintock. And I generally found the Gropegate stories to be pretty well done, and believed the allegations.

    I had a little problem with the anonymity, but given the level of detail, I could have lived with that — if the timing hadn’t stunk so badly.

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  4. Love the selective amnesia.

    Immediately before Kerry locked up the nomination, major media carried rumors that a woman he’d slept “fled the country at his urging.”

    Find me the post of mine where I trumpeted that rumor and I’ll buy you a case of beer, steve.

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  5. Patterico, apparently ‘Steve’ holds you accountable for stories which you weren’t responsible for !

    Since you’re being credited with things which you had no hand in, will you accept my congratulations for the invention of the air conditioner ?
    I always appreciate it this time of year.

    The stunningly disingenous aspect of Steve Lopez’ whining about the 2003 recall election, is that the Times ran all of those hit pieces on Arnold, yet would not even TOUCH the story on Gray Davis having physically assaulted his long-time secretary. That was a story which was confirmed as true, and the well-regarded Jill Stewart even offered the Times her piece about to run in the Times—yet the Times wouldn’t run it.

    Desert Rat (d8da01)

  6. Jill is well-regarded by you and me, but not by John Carroll.

    Patterico (50c3cd)

  7. It’s on stories like this that the media’s rep for dishonest bias hurts the Liberals the most. Time was when you knew which party a paper backed because they pretty much said so, but you also knew that if they ran something like gropegate, they had a substrata of fact because if they didn’t the opposition newspaper would crucify them.

    Gropegate failed to have the impact it maybe should have because we have come to expect such stories about Republicans to be largely baseless hatchet jobs by dishonest Liberal reporters. There have been so many of them. Conversely the Swiftboat attacks and Rathergate probably had a disproportionate effect, because we expect that the media will downplay anything of the kind. If they run something that discredits a Liberal it MUST be damn serious.

    C. S. P. Schofield (c1cf21)

  8. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

    Print the story before the election, and you get accused of trying to swing the election.

    Print it after the election, and you get accused of trying to swing the election by sitting on it.

    [Wow. It’s like you didn’t read a word of my post, but commented anyway. How’s about printing it before the election, but making sure you don’t wait until there’s less than a week to go? You know — like I said in the post. — Patterico]

    Geek, Esq. (825962)

  9. Geek, you conveniently neglected the third option: print the story several weeks in advance of the election, while the public has time to absorb it and both sides have time to respond, and no one will have reason to accuse you of anything.

    Xrlq (f52b4f)

  10. the last-minute surprise has been part of the art of politics for a long time, since the very first election back in the pleistocene; no amount of complaining will make it go away. newspapers are complicit in these surprises because, like everybody else, they are partisan. “objective journalist” is an oxymoron.
    instead of rehashing surprises from 2003, how about anticipating some of the titillating dirt we’ll be treated to in the last week of schwarzenegger versus angelides, along with your prediction of the result (i predict schwarzenegger by a slim margin, too much star power, unless a video of him torturing puppies surfaces).

    assistant devil's advocate (2c87d5)

  11. I’m just wondering why the paper hasn’t gotten huzzahs from the professional gas bags…

    It’s really quite simple Steve, we’ve stopped reading your silly little paper. Know what? You were among the main reasons for my cancelled subscription.

    On the day of Schwarzenegger’s victory, were you man enough to congratulate him, or at least have the character to stay silent? Nope, one last hateful lob with an assist from the Times. Remember your “Gropenfuer” column? Of course you do – you’re still patting yourself on the back for such a cleaver column.

    And the Times thought so too! They used that bold Gropenfuer headline again on the jump page.

    So the Times made a few critical comments about the Democratic primary candidates. Big deal. Lets see how the Times (and you) play it during the governors’ race. I’m not expecting to be surprised.

    TakeFive (2bf7bd)

  12. I’m just wondering why the paper hasn’t gotten huzzahs from the professional gas bags…

    It’s really quite simple Steve, we’ve stopped reading your silly little paper. Know what? You were among the main reasons for my cancelled subscription.

    On the day of Schwarzenegger’s victory, were you man enough to congratulate him, or at least have the character to stay silent? Nope, one last hateful lob with an assist from the Times. Remember your “Gropenfuer” column? Of course you do – you’re still patting yourself on the back for such a cleaver column.

    And the Times thought so too! They used that bold Gropenfuer headline again on the jump page.

    So the Times made a few critical comments about the Democratic primary candidates. Big deal. Lets see how the Times (and you) play it during the governors’ race. I’m not expecting to be surprised.

    TakeFive (2bf7bd)

  13. Steve Lopez POINTS WEST
    Der Gropenfuhrer Muscles His Way Into Office — So What Now?
    [HOME EDITION]

    Los Angeles Times – Los Angeles, Calif.
    Author: Steve Lopez
    Date: Oct 8, 2003
    Start Page: B.1
    Section: California Metro; Part B; Metro Desk
    Document Types: Commentary
    Text Word Count: 833

    http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/420487341.html?dids=420487341:420487341&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Oct+8%2C+2003&author=Steve+Lopez&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&edition=&startpage=B.1&desc=Steve+Lopez+POINTS+WEST

    TakeFive (2bf7bd)

  14. assistant devil’s advocate, actually if the LA Times was trying to hurt Schwarzenegger the timing was not ideal, it made it too easy to dismiss the story as a last minute smear. And then the story quickly died when Schwarzenegger won anyway. I got the impression the LA Times was internally divided about the story producing a less than optimum hit piece.

    James B. Shearer (fc887e)

  15. #11

    Totally agree, Take Five. Steve Lopez has an acid pen. That in itself wouldn’t be a problem, but his relentless one-note agenda is really tiresome. Surprising the Times doesn’t print letters in Spanish yet.

    Vermont Neighbor (a9ae2c)

  16. The case that comes to mind is W’s 2000 campaign. The media report of his drinking arrest nearly cost him the election as it was released the weekend before the voting actually took place. Clearly editors like the publicity and money it brings in more than the ethics.

    Orlando Armaswalker (259251)

  17. Re; Bush’s DUI

    The way I remember it, Bush’s DUI turned into a non-story awfully quickly, even for an “October Surprise”. It seems that early in the primary season he had held a (poorly attended) press conference at which he announced “I am an alcoholic. I am in recovery, and haven’t drunk in years, but I will always be an alcoholic” or words to that effect. Then, when the DUI story ‘came out’ the Bush campaign sent a second stringer to tell the press “At the beginning of the campaign Mr. Bush told you he was an alcoholic. What did you think he meant?”

    I may recall incorrectly, but I don’t remember much being made of this at the time. The notion that this ‘October Surprise’ cost Bush significantly didn’t cross my path until the beginnings of the 2004 election year. The 2000 election was close, but I’ve never thought the DUI accusation was a major reason.

    This interests me because I think that if Kerry had done something similar, he would have benefitted hugely. An early press conference where he said “When I returned home from Vietnam I was a very angry young man. I was not careful about my companions and did some ill considered things.” Would have neutralized the ‘threw his medals away’ attack and the fact that two of the people in whose company he testified about US atrocities were frauds. With those two unpalatable truths mitigated, the swiftboaters’ attacks would have mattered far less.

    But Kerry apparently couldn’t see that trying to be both a War Hero and an ANTI-War Hero was a recipe for criticism that would be hard to shake.

    That lack of foresight alone disqualified him as far as MY vote was concerned.

    C. S. P. Schofield (c1cf21)

  18. There was more than a whiff of eau de barnyard coming off the pages of the Times that held Lopez’ self congratulatory column earlier this week. “See, we’re real hot shot professional newshounds with a very tight code of ethics. We just deliver the facts maam!” Well the Times did cover the mudfight (or should I say sludge in Tahoe fight) that was the Democratic gubernatorial primary. They repeated the charges that each side made.

    Lopez wonders why gasbags, professional or otherwise didn’t give the Times credit for this “even handed” approach.

    I’ll tell you why. Aside from gagging a little bit about the self congratulatory aspect of this, I knew doggone well that once the primary was over, the Times would get behind the winnner (in this case Angelides, who they had endorsed in the primary) and would immediately start to repair the damage.

    Why was I not surprised when the next column by George Skelton, ace Sacramento political reporter for the Times, came out the very next day, dutifully repairing the damage to Angelides?

    That’s why this particular amateur gasbag wasn’t giving any kudoes to the Times for its primary coverage. Sorry Steve–you and the Times are going to have to do a better job of demonstrating actual adherence to your supposed “ace professional newshound code of ethics” before people start buying your newspaper again.

    Mike Myers (3a4363)


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